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WHO issues global guidelines to stop surgical infections, superbugs

by Thomas Dworetzky, Contributing Reporter | November 07, 2016
Business Affairs Infection Control

A pilot study in four African countries showed that use of some of the new guidelines could lead to as much as a “39 percent reduction in surgical site infections.”

Care-related infection has long been a challenge, and in the news.

The subject has been addressed repeatedly in HCB News Magazine by Thom Wellingon, the CEO and a stockholder in Infection Control University, a company that provides staff training programs and control processes for infectious microorganisms in hospitals, clinics, long-term care facilities and other health care-related institutions.

He has noted that “HAIs are considered mostly preventable incidents and require changes in behavior. Health care program reforms have focused greater emphasis on reducing infections. Actions taken under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), along with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), including the elimination of hospital reimbursement for HAIs, have indirectly improved outcomes. Annual patient deaths from HAIs have fallen drastically from nearly 100,000 to 75,000. More progress is needed, but change is producing results.”

Most dramatically, the well-publicized cleaning problems of duodenoscopes that led to superbug infections highlighted the potential tragedies that can result.

A U.S. Senate report “determined that, between 2012 and spring 2015, closed-channel duodenoscopes were linked to at least 25 different instances of antibiotic-resistant infections that sickened at least 250 patients worldwide."

The problems led the FDA to issue an order to three manufacturers of these sophisticated scopes marketed in the U.S. to start using post-market surveillance to get better insight into the way these devices are reprocessed in the real world.

“This is a significant step in the effort to combat infections spread through duodenoscopes. The FDA has undertaken an in-depth investigation into the factors that may play a role in infection transmission associated with duodenoscopes, and is now requiring manufacturers to study the devices in the clinical setting where they are being used,” said Dr. William Maisel, deputy director for science, and chief scientist at the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, in a statement at the time.

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